Lyrical Ballads

This collaborative collection by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was published, anonymously, in 1798. The majority of the 23 contributions were by Wordsworth, and included ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, ‘The Thorn’ and ‘The Idiot Boy’. Coleridge penned four, the most famous being ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. He provided an additional poem for the second, two-volume edition, but only Wordsworth’s name featured on the title-page. Wordsworth wrote the entire second volume, and also a prose Preface containing theories: for example, he explained his preference for subjects drawn from ‘low and rustic life’, and argued that poetry should be written in the language of ordinary people, a feature ridiculed by contemporary critics.

Wordsworth’s vision of London’s serene beauty was composed on the roof of a coach – the poet was en route to France to meet his illegitimate daughter Caroline for the first time. Professor John Mullan explores the background to the poem.